Night fell faster than Corvin remembered. It was his own fault—he moved at a sticky slow pace, drifting with listless intent—and it left him stranded still within sight of the city when the first film of darkness shuttered in. Head cupped in his palms and body pressed to the cool sand, he watched its lights blink at him from afar, gradually growing smaller and sparser as sleep befell the human settlement.

Staying this close should've made his skin prickle and prodded at his spine with icy fingers, yet fear seemed a strangely faraway concept. His feet swung to and fro. As he lifted a finger to trace the tops of the claw-sized buildings, drawing a picture of all the skyline's spires and dips in the air before him, the well he sank into was one of gentle, meandering peace.

Lost. He felt lost, though not in an unkind way. Lost in the way a piece of timber freshly snapped from its tree floated downriver: rocked in aimless loops, off on an adventure that did not yet have a destination, edges still brittle and jagged from being so harshly snapped from where it previously belonged. That thought was rougher, travelling the length of his body as a small shiver. He lifted his head and stretched his arm out before him, thumb tracing the pinkish pearl sheen of a recently healed scar. The moonlight caressed it, making the thin strip of skin appear as if it were stolen from someone else.

Perhaps it was. He shifted his hand to cover up the trio of scars, though the smattered presence of all the rest nicked at him like translucent knives.

He looked to the starlit sky and searched again for its easy peace. As if she knew how to assist, Meag moaned softly from her nest in the dune beside him, her dewy breath tickling his ear. He twitched it upward, listening to her soft snores. He'd missed her. Meag was a steady companion, anchoring in a way that nothing else could be anymore. She cared, deeply, and she came whenever he called. Kyril had called her useful, but also dim and lumbering and too soft, much too soft, head emptied by an excess of loyalty. He'd only ever tolerated her.

Knowing that had always been a source of slight discomfort, but now that silk-smooth sensation coiled pleasingly in his belly, made nippingly cold and bitter by spite. He stroked the mane of fur that slid along the back of Meag's neck, setting his chin down and tipping his head so that his cheek pressed to her snout.

"I'm glad you're here, girl." He gazed upon his slanted view of the desert and the city he should be running from. "Thank you."

It all should've been a warning sign. He should've seen the way those words could reflect—Meag should've been his mirror. He wished he'd recognised his own foolishness before Kyril had to spell it out for him in scars.

"You're all I have now," he whispered. He didn't know he was crying until his voice broke apart.

His time with Raya had been a chance to hide. Now, out on the cold, barren sands, with the human city far enough away to be confined to fuzzy-edged memories and strange tales, the feelings had no stopper. He could do nothing but let them flow, thick and weighty in his chest. Salt stung his lips and dried his throat. He curled his knees up underneath him, spilling a wave of sand under his cloak and between his bare legs, and sealed the world out. His antlers carved a network of trenches into the dune's edge as he turned his forehead downward, eyes scrunched shut. He tasted the echo of his whimper. It felt thin, fragile like a stray leaf drifting out into open, frigid air.

Freedom was a kind thing. He liked the lack of certainty, the great sprawl of differing paths stretched ahead of him. He liked being lost.

It shouldn't hurt like this, but maybe that was what loneliness did.

Sense soon rushed in to cut the flow of tears, but they were enough to leave his eyes sore and face damp. Too exhausted to bother wiping it, he peered past his arm again at the tiny shape of the city. Mellow calm—ever easily within his grasp, despite the way his thoughts scrabbled and growled beneath its blanket—settled over his limbs and eased the tension in his muscles, but the heaviness in his chest stayed. It wouldn't let him move.

He might've laid there for hours more, watched a sleepless night slide by and drunk in the intoxicating smudges of fiery gold that came with the sunrise, had he not been startled by an unexpected sound.

It wasn't quite a scream, but it stabbed at Corvin's chest twice as hard as a scream would have. His head shot up, ears pricked, heart pounding. The sound oscillated, a rumble and a murmur and a whine, tight in the middle as if strangled, and it was painfully familiar.

Meag was on her feet before he was. All semblance of her doze was shoved aside to make way for a wide, alert look that turned her eyes into great black moons. She crooned a responding call, its pitch shrieking upward with her panic. One of her own was in trouble. She huffed and shifted, ready to run.

Hand outstretched, Corvin scrambled up the dune's slope and skidded in front of her, mustering a stern, pensive look he hoped would calm her enough to listen. When she bucked, he pushed back, palm flat on her snout. Wired tension held him in place under her gentle force. His toes curled into the sand, careful not to slip.

"I hear it, girl," he said, somewhat grateful to let the language of the beasts roll gracefully over his tongue. He was proficient enough at speaking like a human—and, though Kyril's dismissive taunts still rang in his head, the talent had proved more than useful—but it was a relief to look into Meag's huge eyes and speak as he was born to. It came far easier, with none of the same complexities. Tempering his tone to combat his and the beast's fear was much less of a challenge. "Steady."

The reflection of pain shone in Meag's dark gaze, but she obediently went still.

The beast's faltering call sailed across the desert again. Corvin winced, sure for a moment that the shiver lancing his spine would be enough to topple him. When he righted himself, he spooled threads of his panic into his internal grip, knotting them around his fingers until they became the reins of action. With one final pat to Meag's snout, he moved to her side.

"It's okay," he murmured into her ear. She watched him with unsurety, something pleading swelling in the depths of her gaze. In response, he showed her a reassuring smile and clung to its confidence. "I'm worried too. Shall we investigate?"

She snorted her agreement, pawing at the sand, and that was all the discussion they needed. Fingers dug into her coarse fur, he hefted himself up, heels shoving at known footholds to allow him to scramble up her side with a small amount of nimble grace. Once there, he swung himself around and settled into a seated position atop her shoulders, hands curled into her mane. He reached for his flute, recalled its absence like a shock of wind that prickled as he brushed it aside, and whistled a sharp note instead.

Meag's wings stirred to life, and within moments, they were aloft. The ground plummeted into shadow beneath them. Corvin kept his eyes on the horizon as his stomach flipped, used to the sensation but still not quite able to relax into the turbulent bite of the wind.

It grew easier once her ascent was complete and the flight levelled off, though his hands still stayed firmly clasped to their holds. Careful to keep his thighs locked to hold his position, he leaned forward, scanning the shade-striped sand. The night leached all colour from the scene, but the stars lit it anew in fresh clarity, and he soon picked out the whiter shapes of living things with ease: the beast was a sizeable blot even from up here, but smaller figures circled it, their outlines much more humanoid. Hope that this group belonged to his kind flapped behind his ribs, but he didn't dare let it loose. Teeth clenched, he spurred Meag towards the scene.

Going down was no less difficult than up, though the squeeze of fear held so much of his focus that he barely noticed the way his insides pitched forward. The sand rushed to greet him, and the figures scattered. Shouts peppered the air, jarring to his sensitive ears, but he pushed through their clamorous web and drove Meag between the injured beast and the gang of humans. Her squat feet cut a trench as she skidded into their hasty landing. Grace was forgotten in favour of anger.

He felt her keening growl as a vibration in his thighs. Placing a calming pat on the side of her neck, he swerved to face the humans. They were mostly male, he assumed from their patchwork pelts and angled jaws and cropped hair, clustered in an arc behind the two long-haired, yellow-cloaked females in their midst. Mages. On instinct, his lip curled.

"Stay back," he spat. He realised too late that he could—and should—have spoken in their language, but the words nipped his tongue as a coarse snarl instead, nonsense to human ears.

His antlers felt heavy where they pressed into his skull, heat curling from their base to flush his cheeks. He was potently aware of the way they stared. Fear spattered the faces of the males, tensing their grips on their wicked bone blades, but something nastier sparked in the luminescent gazes of the females. A sharp readiness dribbled into their stances. Their hands dug into the twin pouches strapped to their waists, and Corvin knew what would happen next.

Panic hammered within, but he fought to keep his head straight, to think. He couldn't let that burning stuff touch him again. Bending towards Meag's ear, he whispered a command: "Meag, charge."

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